Janet Rivera cares for both her 79-year-old mother, who has dementia, and her 25-year-old son, who has a genetic condition called Fragile X syndrome. Despite their differing diagnoses, both of her loved ones share a common symptom: They are prone to wander away from home, and have cognitive impairments that make it hard to find their way back.

When she came across L.A. Found, a county program that distributes free technology to help locate vulnerable people with cognitive disabilities, it felt like a lifeline.

The county gave her son and mother each a free wristband that emits a radio signal every few seconds. Were either of them to go missing, Rivera would call the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, which would switch on its monitoring system and track the signal from the missing person’s device.

She feels that the trackers preserve her loved ones’ freedom and independence, while reducing her fears that they could be hurt if she couldn’t immediately find them.

“You don’t know how much this helps us with our stress as a caregiver, for our peace of mind,” she told an audience assembled Wednesday in downtown L.A.’s Gloria Molina Grand Park.

The event marked seven years of the L.A. Found program, and the addition of a new technology tool in the program’s arsenal.

Enrollees can now choose between two wearable devices: a radio transmitter wristband supported by the nonprofit Project Lifesaver, or a GPS-enabled smartwatch from technology company Theora Care that can be paired with an app on a caregiver’s phone.

The program, which also offers in-home safety training and other resources for families, grew out of Manhattan Beach resident Kirk Moody’s efforts to locate his wife, Nancy Paulikas, who went missing Oct. 15, 2016, while the couple was visiting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

While Moody and family members searched the museum grounds, security cameras captured Paulikas — who had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease — walking away down Wilshire Boulevard. He received a call in December 2018 that remains discovered in a Sherman Oaks park were hers.

During his two-year search, Moody and the nonprofit Alzheimer’s Los Angeles began working with Supervisor Janice Hahn and others on an initiative that became L.A. Found.

The service is available to any L.A. County resident with a diagnosis of dementia, autism or other cognitive disability that puts them at higher risk of wandering.

More than 1,800 people have since received a tracking device through the program, and 29 have been successfully located after going missing.

“No one has to go through this anguish and hopelessness and fear,” Moody said Wednesday on the ninth anniversary of his wife’s disappearance.

Wandering is a common symptom of dementia and autism, though for different reasons.

The brain degeneration associated with Alzheimer’s disease typically starts in the entorhinal cortex, which helps track our position as we move through space, and then moves on to the hippocampus, which helps us understand where things are in relation to us.

As the disease advances, it becomes increasingly difficult for people to mentally track their own location, and recall where they intend to go or how to get back home.

Autistic people may wander away from home or a caregiver to follow something that’s captured their attention, or to escape uncomfortable sensory stimuli such as noises or bright lights.

Studies have found that up to 60% of people with dementia, and 25% to 50% of autistic people, will wander or bolt at some point. These episodes can result in injury or death. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, autistic children in particular are often drawn to bodies of water while lost. An average of seven autistic children in the U.S. drown every month after going missing, according to the National Autism Assn.

Most challenging for families is that many at-risk people can successfully bypass complicated systems of locks and security sensors, even while lacking the verbal or cognitive abilities to seek help once they are lost.

People have slipped away while surrounded by attentive caregivers, and even when families have taken extensive measures to ensure their safety.

Kate Movius has studied wandering extensively and trains first responders on supporting autistic people. She equipped her Highland Park home with a slew of locks and security sensors to protect her autistic son. Nevertheless, by the time she acquired a Project Lifesaver wristband for Aidan, who is now 25, he had gone missing several times.

“If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone,” Movius said. “You’re putting out so many fires as a caregiver, and [wandering] is not going to occur to you until you’re living it.”

If you or someone you know could benefit from L.A. Found’s free services, contact the program at (833) 569-7651, lafound@ad.lacounty.gov or ad.lacounty.gov/lafound.

Three more deaths in Los Angeles County have been linked to kratom, a compound that is being synthetically reproduced and sold over the counter as a cure-all for a host of ailments, the county Department of Public Health announced on Friday.

The compound, also known as 7-Hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH, was found to be a contributing cause of death in three residents who were between the ages of 18 and 40, according to the county health department.

That brings the total number of recent overdose deaths related to kratom in L.A. County to six. The first three deaths were identified in September. Alcohol was also found in all six individuals.

“It’s critical that the community understand that these products are dangerous and can result in fatal overdoses,” said Gary Tsai, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s Substance Abuse Prevention and Control Bureau. “The safest thing to do is avoid using 7-OH and kratom-related products altogether.”

In addition, Tsai said, to reverse an opioid overdose, the best approach is to administer naloxone.

Kratom is an herbal extract derived from the leaves of Mitragyna speciosa, a tree native to Southeast Asia, and is commonly sold as a powder or pill — sometimes based on its natural form, and sometimes based on a synthetic version. Recently, U.S. purveyors have been selling more and more products with potentially dangerously concentrated amounts of 7-OH, according to a July report from the Food and Drug Administration.

Researchers say there are people in the United States who use kratom to alleviate anxiety and chronic pain or as a remedy for the symptoms associated with quitting opioids. But despite its use for pain relief, public health officials have raised concerns about the potential for 7-OH abuse because of its ability to bind to opioid receptors in the body.

“Retailers should immediately stop selling any 7-OH products, as these are not lawfully marketed in the U.S. as a drug product, dietary supplement, or food additive,” L.A. County’s public health department said on Friday.

The synthetic product comes in various forms such as tablets, gummies, drink mixes, and concentrated liquid extracts or shots for drinking. When mixed with alcohol and certain drugs, 7-OH can cause severe respiratory depression, when breathing becomes too slow, which in worse-case scenarios can lead to death.

According to warning letters sent by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to firms marketing kratom-related products, 7-OH has not been approved by the FDA and is not permitted to be marketed or sold as a drug or additive to food or drinks.

In the absence of regulation at the state level, some communities in California have taken it upon themselves to act. Orange County and the cities of Newport Beach, San Diego and Oceanside have all prohibited the sale, distribution or possession of kratom.

Layoff notices went out Tuesday to 550 employees at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in response to ongoing budgetary chaos at the legendary La Cañada Flintridge facility.

The layoffs reduced the employee headcount by more than 10% and affected teams across the institution, according to multiple sources not authorized to speak publicly.

A reorganization for remaining staffers will be announced on Wednesday.

“This week’s action, while not easy, is essential to securing JPL’s future by creating a leaner infrastructure, focusing on our core technical capabilities, maintaining fiscal discipline, and positioning us to compete in the evolving space ecosystem,” JPL Director Dave Gallagher said in a statement Monday.

The cuts were part of a reorganization that began in July, he said, and are not related to the federal government shutdown that began on Oct. 1.

JPL staffers are employed by Caltech, and none have been furloughed since the standoff between Democrats and Republicans in Congress began. But the research facility started preparing for a leaner future even before President Trump took office, and is enduring one of the most challenging stretches in its nearly 89-year history.

“The morale has been as low as anyone has seen in decades, maybe ever,” an employee spared by the layoffs said. “The uncertainty is very unsettling. … We expect more people will leave in the coming months due to continued uncertainty on the type of work that may or may not come.”

Layoffs and attrition have reduced JPL’s overall staffing by about one-third in the last two years, sources at the organization said, from roughly 6,500 to around 4,500 after this week’s reduction. JPL endured three rounds of layoffs last year alone, prompted by massive federal budget cuts for its beleaguered Mars Sample Return mission.

The Eaton fire came perilously close to the campus in January, forcing some 20% of the agency’s workforce to evacuate their homes. About 210 employees lost their homes in the fire, and dozens more were displaced for months.

Then in May, the Trump administration proposed a $6-billion cut from NASA’s $24.8-billion budget for the coming fiscal year, a 24% drop from its current allocation.

While both the House and Senate appropriations committees would largely keep the agency’s overall funding intact, their budgets reallocate money within the space agency in ways that could profoundly affect JPL’s work.

The House appropriations bill would keep NASA’s funding steady but cut about $1.3 billion from NASA’s $7.3 billion Science Mission Directorate, which funds many of the missions that JPL manages. The Senate bill, in contrast, would maintain the science program’s funding.

It’s not yet clear how the most recent layoffs will affect JPL’s work on drought, fire and climate change. No missions have yet been canceled or paused. But with no end in sight to the stalemate, JPL’s future remains in limbo.

“JPL is a national asset that has helped the United States accomplish some of the greatest feats in space and science for decades,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) said. “Taken together with last year’s layoffs, this will result in an untold loss of scientific knowledge and expertise that threatens the very future of American leadership in space exploration and scientific discovery.”

Times staff writer Hayley Smith contributed to this report.